Political parties are founded by their ideologues who espouse certain political ideologies they prop up and present to the larger public in form of political manifestos. Politicians sort out and join any political party based on the party’s ideologies and stated manifestos. Having been satisfied by a party’s ideologies and manifestos, every voter on election day vote for that political party of his/her choice irrespective of who the party fielded in the electoral contests. Parties had won elections in contests where they did not even field candidates.
Governor Ohakim of Imo state was once a deputy gubernatorial candidate in the AD from where he defected to the PDP. He latter defected to the PPA through which he got the position of governor of Imo state.
On July 25, Ohakim once again defected to the PDP.
One of the highlights of the defection fiesta was the PDP chairman, Vincent Ogbulafor, declaring the dissolution of the incumbent PDP executive in Imo state, setting up a care-taker committee and declaring Governor Ohakim the leader of the party in the state. Since then it has been litigation, faction fighting and infighting galore in Imo state PDP. And PDP moderates and lovers of party internal democracy had been heaping baskets of criticism on the party chairman’s actions.
Let us assume in this circumstance that the PDP’s objective is to retake Imo state in 2011; and that the PDP is not flirting with the idea that there is to be a repeat of the kind of electoral charade of 2007 in Nigeria.
Let us again assume that the on-going electoral reforms are meant to guide Nigeria to free and fair elections in 2011 and beyond.
The questions, more so, from Imo state, therefore remains: (1) How could one without untoward intentions so hurriedly impose demonstrated ideology-bereft and apparent treasure hunters in the cloak of politicians on those who had steadfastly laboured for more than a decade for the party’s interests in the state?
(2) What has been the response of the PDP top hierarchy to the awful accusation that hardly had it left Owerri on July 25 when Governor Ohakim commenced putting down the names of people the PDP in Imo state would present to all elective posts in the state in the 2011 elections? Whither party internal democracy?
(3) Did the PDP chairman not believe that given the gutterlect and circumspect political antecedents of Governor Ohakim, he (the chairman) is seen as either having some ulterior motives or being excessively pedantic for not allowing local party officials emerge for Imo state through party internal democracy? That if he persists, he may be pushing the state PDP to a protracted infighting? And that in such a fight the PDP must emerge the loser?
(4) And talk of Ohakim and the PDP flag in Imo state, does being a governor make one a vote winner?
Pini Jason. Remember him? The once indefatigable writer on the Vanguard stable, a contemporary Nigerian journalist who would love to call a spade by its name. Some described his writings as being too Igbocentric but he must have had millions of admirers. Among the early acts of Ikedi Ohakim as governor that endeared him to the hearts of many people (including this writer), was appointing Pini Jason as his special adviser. Jason does not even hail from Imo state. Many see Pini Jason as the arrowhead of the Ohakim administration.
On assumption of duty as governor, Ohakim discovered a political bank for good will – clearing the mess of refuse in Owerri – and he quickly embarked on restoring the state capital to its old glory of the cleanest capital city in Nigeria. His predecessor had apparently refused to assume the post of Gardener and Refuse-Officer-in-Chief of Owerri Municipal Council, and had received numerous swipes for that.
Indiscriminate burial of corpses in living homes and surroundings of living quarters in Igbo land is supposed to give a discerning mind some cause for worries. Governor Ohakim set out to outlaw this practice in Imo state, but perhaps, must have met a stone wall in a population (a lot of the clergy not excluded) still fixated on the concept of reincarnation and life after death; in this part of Nigeria, there is an overwhelming number of Arthur Conan Doyles - the British physician/writer turned spiritualist - who believed that the living can communicate with the dead. It shall therefore take more than an Ohakim-led government legislation to outlaw that ugly burial practice in the state.
The governor also proposed setting up an airline but met a stiff opposition from many quarters.
A few days ago, Chief Rex Anunobi, political adviser to the governor stated the achievements of the Ohakim-led administration which he said were: construction of asphalt roads in the state, Imo state Wonder Lake, a beautiful and clean state capital, prompt payment of workers and teachers salaries, upgrade of facilities at the Imo state House of Assembly, dredging of Nworie River, setting up of IRROMA, introduction of modern city transport system.
It is pertinent to acknowledge that the governor did a few asphalt roads mostly in his local government area. The Imo Wonder Lake is a media-bloated project at what stage of construction the public has not been officially informed since it hit the airwaves nearly two years ago.
However, many believe that given the revenues that accrued to Imo state - an oil producing state - in the last two years, the governor ought to have been in a position to point to land mark structures and development programmes he initiated or completed in the state. Ohakim’s critics contend that mere planting of grass and refurbishing of street lights within the state capital, setting up of IRROMA and building a few roads mostly in the governor’s local government area – the most visible achievements of the state administration in the last 26 months – can in no way explain away the depletion of funds meant for capital projects in the state within the same period.
There is also the contention by many that by exerting nearly all his administrative acumen on the state capital, Governor Ohakim cunningly redrew the map of Imo state for his administration’s convenience.
But he drastically shortened his political credit line in that ploy. There are not less than 5 million people in Imo state (this figure can double during the Yuletide) and the state capital contains less than 450 thousand of them. And a fraction of this population in the state capital are permanently migratory students. In most parts of the state outside the state capital, the most basic of amenities - pipe-borne water - where it existed before had ceased to exist. These places lack modern amenities taken for granted in other towns outside the state capitals of the neighbouring states. Governor Ohakim’s self-inflicted obsession with the idea that all about a state is the state’s capital drew some barrage in the June 9, 2009 THISDAY editorial which reminded him, among others, that “real modernisation should not be limited to the state capital, it will require massive opening up of the rural areas”.
Local government elections have not been held in Imo state since May 29, 2007. The governor’s hand-picked care-taker committee members have held sway in the local governments ever since. People believe if Governor Ohakim had facilitated local government elections, there could perhaps, emerge from the elections, some zealous persons bent on carrying out real development projects and programmes in their council areas. The consequence of the tabooed local government elections in Imo state and Governor Ohakim’s fixation on the state capital is that the rest of the state outside the capital has suffered arrested development since May 2007.
Allegations are rife that much of Imo state’s funds are being channelled to induce people within and beyond the confines of Imo state to consolidate support for a new state agitation front recently opened up by Governor Ohakim in his home zone, Okigwe. Governor Ohakim, indirectly kicked off the demand for Ugwuaka state in government house, Owerri, last December when he appointed his election petitions lawyer, Bon Nwakamma, to chair a State Creation Co-ordination Committee he set up then. More than 80% of the committee’s members including its secretary, was made up of people from Okigwe senatorial zone, a zone made up of 6 out of the 27 local government areas in Imo state. After close to six months of jamboree sponsored by the Imo state government, the committee told Imo people that the other decades-old state agitation groups in the state were not worth it; that Ugwuaka state with Okigwe as its capital is it! One of the other state agitation groups in the state which said it earlier observed the skewed composition of the committee members and refused to participate in its activities had since repudiated the committee and its recommendation. Governor Ohakim had since praised the committee for its recommendation and pledged to forward it to higher quarters.
To many the governor appeared Tomfoolery here as he is seen to have by this action sold off his electoral fortunes before most of the old and young in the 12 local government areas of Imo West senatorial zone for whom agitation for a state in their area had since reached near frenetic point. Many there now believe that Ohakim is not a man to be trusted given that as governor, he had pledged his unflinching support on various occasions before the elders of Njaba state Movement for their agitation for a new state.
Mid August 2009, Imo state government-endorsed cheques are bouncing in the banks. Late June 2009, the state government obtained from a group of financiers a UBA Capital-led 18.5billion Naira bond issue as the first in the series of a 40billion Naira Medium Term bond issuance programme of the state – a bond backed by an Irrevocable Standing Payment Order on the Federal Allocations of Imo state. Imo people are having their fingers crossed in expectation of the commencement of the specified projects to which the facility was tied during its negotiations.
Meanwhile, many in the state are still gnashing their teeth that mere painting of the roof and walls as well as installation of air conditioners (a job analysts estimate must have cost less than 4million Naira) cannot in any way explain the 5billion Naira the Ohakim administration is said to have deployed on the reactivation of the Owerri Shoe Factory. The factory cannot yet produce shoes.
So what does the PDP stand to gain from its Ohakim adventure in Imo state?
And is the PDP leadership convinced that in a free and fair party gubernatorial primaries Governor Ohakim can floor Ifeanyi Ararume in 2011 if the latter decides to run? Many people believe the governor is a political orphan in the state who has so far survived by paying for protection in far and near places hence he cannot achieve that feat in a free and fair primaries. Besides, Ohakim had created so many divisions in Imo state, crated enemies and war fronts for himself through his style of administration, including the newest front against the debilitated PPA. Ohakim is also said to have broken ways with Achike Udenwa, his predecessor who failed to deliver the state’s guber-post to his party in 2007 but rather chose to partake in that ignoble role of crowning a politically perverse candidate from another party as the governor of Imo state. Above all, a beleaguered Ohakim with ubiquitous court summons draining the purse of our state on defence lawyers may not be worth that big fish that drew the PDP top hierarchy to Owerri on July 25.
Other governors had defected to the PDP in the recent past but Governor Ohakim’s latest defection is opprobrious in view of the governor’s abundantly demonstrated disdain for baseline political ethics. His style is not worthy of emulation by the future leaders of this country. The Ohakim saga may rather churn out some revulsion for the PDP. It may even turn out an encumbrance to the party’s plot for Imo state come 2011.
And Pini Jason’s fans are left to ruminate: if Jason was not employed by Governor Ohakim what would he have written in his Vanguard column about the Imo governor and his latest defection dance?
Chidozie Ikeji
Owerri, Imo state
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